What Every Small Business Owner Needs to Know About Design

When you hire a graphic designer, there’s a world of knowledge out there that the average business owner is not aware of when it comes to what they should expect and receive from a designer. To make sure your graphic design project is productive, there are several things to consider and know before you get started to receive the best product and experience.

Know what you want, the style, and how you want it produced while still allowing a creative to develop your product.
There are many different styles of design in the world and not knowing anything about them can have a major impact on the desired result. A huge design trend in 2015 is flat design with mid-century inspired elements.

Make design and usage intentions clear for the design product.
For example, if you are using your logo or poster for only a web-based venture, JPG/PNG raster files are acceptable to receive from the designer. However, if you plan on printing your logo in different sizes or creating a large poster, insist on a vector design. Regardless of usage, a good designer will always give you a variety of file formats suitable for both use: .PNG, .JPG, .AI, .EPS, and .PSD.

Know the different between a raster image and a vector image and appropriate places to use them. (See image). Many inexperienced designers will design in Photoshop or a Paint program and deliver design products, logos and print material as a rasterized image only. When this happens, the logo can only be used on the web and any text may appear distorted upon printing.

Ask about revisions, guaranteed service, and a design contract. Once a person hands money over to a designer, without a set of design rules and agreement, they are at the mercy of the designer. If the relationship should sour, a person may find themselves without their money or even is worst case scenarios, a lack of a design product.

Get a fact/info sheet of your logo/branding that has the color codes (RGB/CMYK) and the fonts used. Eventually, you’ll need this information if you should hire another designer, lose your original files, or decide to build a website.

Educate on basic design and printing press principles, bleeds, and color profiles if you are designing products or printing without the help of a designer. In many cases, the technical support available for do-it-yourself printing websites can only give you standard advice based off the knowledge you present of the process and your ability to articulate your need.

Be prepared to have a flexible budget. Expensive designers and companies are not also better, but if one prepares themselves with the basics and have a general idea of the process, you can weed out the overpriced beginners and zero in on the affordable professionals. Ask the right questions, evaluate their work, get examples of what you like and don’t like with a similar product, and get the company’s/designer’s references.